You can be me when I'm gone
by anthrop
Summary: It goes wrong like this: In increments. In great upheavals. In witching hours nursed over sludgy cups of coffee. In the choking black clouds of grief that steal days away in ragged handfuls. In seconds that shock the heart stone-cold; in moments that send it bolting. In the high shriek of sweeping up broken glass. In the absence of a shatter when something precious is thrown away.


_Written for the Holiday Truce '19 over on Tumblr. My giftee wanted an AU where Danny never go this powers, and to play out how dark that could have gone. Due to my brain turning into so much cold oatmeal in December I only managed to write about half as much as I wanted to, but I feel like this stands up well on its own. I hope you all enjoy!_

* * *

It goes wrong like this:

In increments. In great upheavals. In witching hours nursed over sludgy cups of coffee. In the choking black clouds of grief that steal days away in ragged handfuls. In seconds that shock the heart stone-cold; in moments that send it bolting. In the high shriek of sweeping up broken glass. In the absence of a shatter when something precious is thrown away.

It all goes wrong in pieces. Piecemeal. Always when she's in another room, too far away to do anything to stop it. All she ever hears is the scream, and the wet, and the silence. All she ever has is the aftermath.

Truth be told, it all went wrong 20 years ago. She'd known that in the thick of it. In that queasy length of time after the accident and before it became habitual to never think of the accident. In that time of sterile waiting rooms and the blare of a dial tone after an artificially smooth voice informed her that the number she'd dialed is no longer in service. Somewhere between then and now she'd forgotten just how deep a hole they'd buried that truth in. The three of them. Amigos. Musketeers. Ghostbusters. They'd had matching T-shirts with the movie's logo and everything, bought as a joke and a goal. After the accident it became just the two of them, waiting for their third to come back.

But Vlad never did.

Not then, anyway.

It's funny, really. She should have seen this coming. She's been standing on the tracks for 20 years, watching the train only pick up speed.

It's funny, how much easier it's been to avert her eyes.

* * *

It's late on a Saturday morning, just a few weeks shy of spring. Maddie's in the kitchen, scrubbing at a scabrous mess that might have been eggs over easy a lifetime or two back. She'd reluctantly given Jack the wheel on breakfast, though she's holding off on calling it a disaster unless someone ends up with food poisoning. She's not expecting anything more exciting than another afternoon spent pouring over data sets that refuse to make any sense right up until she hears Jack's panicked bellow of, _"MADDIE!" _

She's bolts out of the kitchen, the water left to run and not a second set aside for guilt about the waste. Jack's broad form is halfway down the stairs to the lab, his latest sewing project scattered across the living room. It's only now that she can hear the banging and thudding from below, the bizarre crumpling tinfoil shriek of something right out of a horror movie, Danny's terrified scream. There's no mistaking the sound of pain, even if _nothing _down there could be the cause of it.

Nothing they'd brought down there anyway.

She sprints after Jack, wondering why the _hell _their security system hadn't uttered so much as a warning blip, then wonders _what _the hell that strange green light splashing across the lab's polished chrome floor is right up until she gets eyes on the scene. There are three enormous green vultures tearing the lab apart, their pale talons and hooked beaks tearing open file cabinets and flipping desks with ease. Jack's hefts a bent-legged stool, swinging wildly at one of them and barking at it to back off. The thing only caws harsh laughter the other two answer, the distorted, grating sounds echoing unnaturally off the chrome walls. They're not even flapping their wings, not really, more of an afterthought or to change directions.

"Ghosts," Maddie breathes out. Her breath mists, and only then does she realize how _cold _it is down here. "Those are ghosts."

"Get_—away—_from him!" Jack snarls, the stool getting a successful hit against the vulture's outstretched legs with a sickening crack. It goes careening back into a table with an outraged, crumpling tinfoil shriek. She blinks at the streak of red at Jack's feet, leading to a heaped pile of metal crates, and the splayed body underneath—

_"Danny!" _

The other two vultures look up sharply, then at each other. One goes to help its fellow attack Jack by the half-assembled ghost portal, the other turns its burning eyes on Maddie. She grins at it nastily. "Security! Intruders! Activate defense protocol: ECHO!"

The walls light up, panels shifting smoothly aside to let the big guns do their work. The harsh cawing turns panicked, then pained. Maddie doesn't waste any time watching the lightshow, ducking under a spray of feathers to get to the heaped crates. She moves them aside as quickly as she dares because _Danny isn't moving. _That streak of blood thickens, nearly pooling at his hip. His T-shirt is splattered red, jeans darkening to black. She stows her panic aside for later, for after. Panicking won't help.

Behind her the fight go on. She hears Jack take a hit and a whole table's worth of beakers shatter. But Jack only swears furiously, then one of the vultures shrieks so he's fine, he's fine, it'll all be fine—

"Just look at me, sweetie," she says urgently, "Focus on me, you'll be alright, you're going to be just fine, just keep your eyes on me—"

"—said—" Danny slurs. "—hurt—Dad—"

"He's fine, your father's got them on the ropes. Now just breathe, Danny, with me, like this, that's right, you're okay—"

The chaos settles into something she can track by ear alone. One of the vultures is on her seven, making a wet, creaky noise. A dying kind of noise. Good. Farther off, near the portal, a second vulture sounds like its at the tail end of a losing battle with the security system. The third swoops overhead, fast or low or simply _big _enough to ruffle her hair as it passes, arcing about to hover at the base of the stairs. It makes a rattling gurgle like a fork stuck in a garbage disposal, then has the audacity to start _talking. _

_"You're more trouble than you're worth, y'know? Ach, my brothers! You got brass to take my brothers down, I'll give you that much, but that's all I'll give! You'll regret this! I'll be sure he sends something real nasty your way the next time!" _

And then it turns without turning at all, swarming up the stairs in a streak of eye-watering green. There's a startled shriek from upstairs scarcely a second later. A _human _shriek.

_"Jazz!" _Maddie and Jack both bellow. No no no, not Jazz too, _please_ not Jazz too—

"What was that?" Jazz shouts down the stairs a breathless eternity later. "It looked like a—jeez! Would it kill you two to keep your wacky experiments locked up?"

"Oh," Jack gasps, leaning heavily on the nearest battered table. "Oh, thank god. Maddie—"

"Hospital," she bites out. Danny's awake in only the most generous of terms, his glassy eyes unfocused and his hands slack over hers as she puts bruising pressure to the deep wound in his side. _"Now."_

Jack barks up at Jazz to call for an ambulance. Maddie hears her run off without asking any questions. Good girl, she listened to all their emergency exercises despite all the grumbling. She trusts Jack to have the lab handled, to keep an eye on the ghosts—the real, actual, full-bodied apparition _ghosts—_in case they get any ideas. All it is now is a waiting game. Keeping Danny stable until he can be moved by someone with more than a rusty grasp on first aid. Speaking of—

"Jack. The first aid kit—"

It appears like magic beside her, Jack's big hand squeezing her shoulder before he darts off again. He trusts her to keep Danny stable until the ambulance arrives. Good. Yes. She can do that.

"Stay with me, sweetie," she whispers, scarcely hearing herself over the clatter of the kit. "You'll be alright. Eyes on me."

* * *

It's not as bad as she'd feared. Blood loss had been the biggest issue. There'd been a surgery, a harrowing smear of time spent nursing a migraine that sent her to the waiting room bathroom three times to empty her stomach of the bitter coffee and dry sandwiches Jazz kept putting in her hands. Eventually she just kept her jumpsuit hood on and ignored the staring it earned; the red lenses soothed her photophobia and a thermos of ginger tea Jazz had gone home to make helped her nausea. God, but she hates fluorescent lighting.

All the details go in one ear and out the other. All that matters is that Danny's _safe. _Danny's _alive. _He'll need to be kept from school for another week, and he'll need to be brought back to the hospital to be put through a small battery of tests to make sure he's recovering well, and the stitches will have to come out after that, but—he's _alive. _He's _safe. _Whatever happened, whatever those things were, it all doesn't matter in the wake of _relief _that sends her collapsing into the nearest chair once she lays eyes on her baby boy again.

"M'okay, jeez, Mom." He smiles at her, still too pale and his eyes a touch too unfocused. There's a nasty bruise on his forehead from when one of those creatures_—ghosts—_tossed him aside, but he'd been lucky enough to avoid a concussion, or anything worse happening to his face besides.

"I know," she says, unable to help the wobble of her voice as she takes one of his hands in both of hers, mindful of the IV. "I know. I'm sorry, sweetie—" She breaks off, squeezing his hand.

Weakly, he squeezes back. "How's Dad?"

"He's alright." He'd needed his own fair share of stitches after fighting off three creatures that had seemed dead set on tearing both their lab and him apart, but they'd been superficial injuries. The hospital released him almost two hours before Maddie was allowed to see Danny. Jazz drove him home despite his loud protests—that must have been when she'd made the tea, come to think of it—and came back with chargers and a fresh change of clothes and books to occupy the hours while they waited together. There will have to be phone calls to the school, and fighting with the insurance company and a mountain of paperwork and the actual, literal _ghosts _in their basement, but—

Later. She'll worry about all of that later.

"He's alright," Maddie repeats. One because it's true, and two because the sloppy grin Danny gives her is reward all on its own. She finds relief in her boy's relief.

"Those things," Danny says, his smile fading. "They were ghosts. Weren't they?"

"Yes."

"Where. Where'd they come from?"

"I don't know," she says. "But don't you worry. Your father and I are going to take them apart down to the last molecule. You'll be _safe, _sweetie. No matter what happens, your father and I will make sure of that."

"That's not what I'm afraid of," Danny replies.

She frowns. "What do you mean?"

"Your portal thing doesn't work." He squeezes her hand again. "So where'd they come from?"

* * *

Danny's released from the hospital two days later, and the family conspires to bundle him upstairs and make sure he stays there. Danny's protests are half-hearted; the pain killer he's taking leaves him drowsy and pliable to offerings of breakfast in bed.

"I was probably gonna gonna fail that bio test anyway," he jokes, and Jazz rolls her eyes and drums up a stack of flashcards like a magic trick. Danny groans dramatically about betrayal, and it's almost like nothing bizarre or otherworldly happened at all.

Almost.

One vulture is, for lack of any other sensible descriptor, dead for keeps. It's a bundle of broken limbs and dim green feathers, all its fire spent and its pseudo-flesh gone room temperature. The other vulture thrashes in its cell, spitting bitter curses and swearing revenge. She and Jack conduct thorough examinations of them both, desperate to make sense of the things that had tried to tear their son to pieces.

She splits her time between testing and analyzing their hundreds of new samples, repairing their battered lab, and Danny's recovery. Her caffeine intake surely triples which makes for dry eyes and shaky hands, but there just aren't enough hours in the day otherwise.

"We'll figure this out," Jack says, pulling her close one evening. He hugs her tightly, broad and warm, and she's able to relax as always against the breadth of him. For a little while, anyway. She just can't shake Danny's terrified scream, or all the blood they'd had to clean up, or the question Danny had put to her in the hospital. Where _had_ they come from?

She reluctantly leaves Danny's bedside one day to sit with Jack to pour over the data gathered on the dead-and-gone ghost and the ghost still gnawing at its containment cell like an overgrown cockatiel. Ghosts. They're really, truly ghosts. Maddie can't help but reel, a little, at such chilling confirmation of their study. Never mind that _decades _of work have finally come to fruition; it's far more disconcerting that the ghosts she and Jack have tried to study all these years are doing their damnedest to kill them.

"Why," she blurts one afternoon when it's just her and the nearly-but-not-quite dead specimen, Jack gone up to share lunch with Danny and Jazz. "What do you want from us?"

It laughs. Not, she thinks, out of spite. It just seems to think she's funny.

* * *

Maddie's world ends with a phone call two weeks after Danny returns to school.

She and Jack haven't felt comfortable leaving the house together, not with the one vulture snarling threats every hour of the day. She loses their game of rock paper scissors, so she takes the grocery list and handful of baked goods-related coupons, kisses Jack on the cheek, and heads out the door. Half an hour later her cell phone rings in the baking aisle, and she thinks nothing more of seeing their house number on the display than that Jack must have decided he needed more vanilla extract after all.

But she barely gets out half a hello before Danny interrupts with a scream of, _"MOM!" _that chills her to the _bone. _

"What happened," she bites out. "Danny. Sweetie, what—"

_"It's Dad, he—shit, shit. I don't. The security, it didn't, he tried to make it—a-activate it, but it didn't work and—it came out of NOWHERE, Mom, I swear, it just appeared and it—shit—Dad's—" _

Dread is a stone caught in her throat she has to swallow so she can ask, "Was there another attack?"

_"Y-yeah. M-mom, I tried—we both—but, but Dad—it." _Danny's voice breaks, hitching wetly. _"Mom, I'm sorry, I swear, but Dad's—he's gone." _

Danny says other things, after that, but she doesn't hear a word.

* * *

Jazz had stayed late at school to tutor. It had just been Jack and Danny home, and Danny was still recovering from the first attack and only _fourteen _besides. He couldn't have done anything. There was nothing_—nothing—_he could have done. Maddie knows this. She still bites her cheek to say nothing as Danny cries into her shoulder.

The police arrive not ten minutes before Jazz does, and they make sure to keep her out of the lab. Some distant part of Maddie is grateful for that. Danny saw what happened. There's no helping that. Jazz doesn't need to see the aftermath too.

Maddie sits in a chair and numbly answers the officers' questions without seeing them, fixated on the people bustling around the body that had been her husband little more than an hour ago. He's unrecognizable now. Only the tattered pieces of his vivid orange jumpsuit confirm that this is. This is really.

That he's really gone.

A haze settles over the day, and the days that follow. She knows the police leave, taking the body with them. She knows she'd consented to copies being made of their security tapes, and that the recording had shown something huge and vaguely shaped like an octopus appearing out of thin air over Danny and Jack in the lab. It had struck Danny aside before it's luminous eyes fell on Jack. Then its ragged arms. Jack had shouted the activation code but the security system doesn't even register he'd spoken it. The recording shows Jack scream, and fall. There are wet sounds, and crunching sounds, and slurping sounds, and finally—silence.

The octopus had shaken the red off its arms, broken the one vulture out, and the pair of them had winked out of existence.

Jack is dead.

Jack is dead.

She should have been there. She should have saved him.

Jazz, eyes red-rimmed, talks at her, but she doesn't hear any of it.

Danny tiptoes around her unless he doesn't, and then she folds him into her arms and holds him close until one or both of them find the strength to close their eyes and sleep.

Her sister Alicia appears in the house as if by magic. She tells Maddie that she'd taken the first flight out of Arkansas after Jazz had called to tell her what happened, and that she's so, so sorry, and that Maddie doesn't have to worry about a thing because she'll handle everything. All Maddie has to do is take care of herself and the kids.

Funny, how she nods like she understood a word of it. Like she should be trusted to protect Jazz and Danny when there are real, honest monsters out there that can turn the love of her life into a pile of meat despite their every precaution. What can she do against something like that? What can she do at all?

"Be here," Alicia says firmly, squeezing her shoulder. "Those kids are grieving just as hard as you, Maddie. They need you to be here. And take a shower, won't you? You look a mess."

She takes a shower. She puts on a clean jumpsuit. She goes downstairs and sits with her children in the living room and they ask her, "What do we do?"

She doesn't know. But she can't say that. She knows that. But she can't think of anything right to say at all.

* * *

The funeral is—

There is a funeral.

It's held in Salem, Massachusetts, where Jack's family plot is. They'd never talked about where either of them might want to be buried. They'd both only just turned 40. They'd thought there'd be _time_ to worry about something that was meant to be a cause for concern years from now. But they'd never talked about it, and in the end it seemed—best—easiest—to go where Jack's extended family could sort out the details Maddie couldn't bear to. Maddie's not been to a funeral since her mother passed, and she'd been pregnant with Danny then.

"I don't have a dress," she says feebly the day before the funeral.

"I took care of that," Alicia tells her. "And Jazz and Danny's thing too. Don't worry, sweetheart. I've got you."

There is a funeral.

Held in the First Church of Salem, which Jack had attended with his family until the day he'd left for UW-Madison. Maddie hasn't stepped foot in a church since their wedding day. Religion has always sat uneasily with her and just about everyone in her family. Alicia's nearly as staunch an atheist as she is, and they sit shoulder to shoulder sharing pointed eyebrow waggling about this or that all throughout. It's almost funny. She almost forgets why she's sandwiched into this front-row pew looking at a big wooden box all but buried under flowers. She looks at the grinning picture of Jack not ten feet away and feels something wither inside of her all over again.

She can't do this.

Everyone will expect her to stand up and speak, to sum up the 20 years they shared in a few pretty sentences, to find a way to make Jack's death sound poignant instead of terrible.

She can't do this.

The minister finishes and invites anyone who would speak up to the lectern. Maddie feels like her joints have turned to stone. She has to. She can't. It's expected of the _widow _to speak. She can't. What will Jack's family think if she doesn't? She _is _Jack's family but she _can't— _

Danny stands up.

Danny walks past the altar, nods to the minister, braces himself against the lectern. His neck cranes, tendons straining, so he can look at the casket. It's closed, out of necessity. The funeral home had decided there just wasn't enough to be done, so Maddie has already seen Jack for the last time back in Amity Park when he'd been a butchered display on a steel examination table.

"I—" Danny begins, but his voice breaks. He drops his eyes to the lectern, shoulders hunched up to his ears, and tries again.

"When I was little, my dad's idea of a good bedtime story was a ghost story. Every gruesome, horrifying ghost story he knew, and he knew a _lot_. I wasn't scared of monsters in my closet or under my bed. I was _terrified _of every cemetery and abandoned house and empty lot in Amity Park. Of being alone in a bathroom because maybe you didn't really _need _to say Bloody Mary's name three times in the dark. My sister and I went with our parents to a conference in Colorado one time and I _refused _to step foot inside the hotel they'd booked because it looked too much like one he'd told me about. We had to refund the room and stay at a Red Roof instead."

Maddie remembers that. She remembers being frustrated and harried and worried over their presentation, torn between snapping at Danny or Jack for adding one more complication to an already disastrous trip. Jazz had ended up with a bad case of bed bugs that had followed them home, and they'd had to deep clean her room and buy a new mattress too.

She wouldn't change a single minute of that trip now.

"But the thing was," Danny goes on, "he wasn't trying to scare me. He told me those stories about people getting killed or killing themselves or dying in an accident or war or whatever as a precaution. Warning me to be careful with sharp things and the stove, to not play in the lab by myself, to not go with strangers, to come home before dark. And he always told me how to protect myself from a ghost if I ever met one, the same way he did when he was my age." He smiles weakly, and Maddie hears Jazz whisper along with him when he quotes, _"'Make yourself look twice as big as you are and start swinging like your life depends on it, 'cuz it just might.'" _

Alicia swears quietly to herself, wiping her eyes.

"I stopped believing him when I got older. I _chose _not to. I listened to everybody else when they said my parents were crazy for believing in ghosts, because I figured if all these people were so sure ghosts weren't real then they must not be, right? I ignored everything my dad said about ghosts because it was _easier_.

"But, not even a month ago I saw my first ghosts. They're real. They're _real," _he repeats, beating his fist against the lectern and glaring out at the pews. "They put me in the hospital. I would have _died _if my dad hadn't saved me. Every single warning and security exercise and—and _everything. Everything _my parents tried to teach me my whole life finally meant something that day and I just _stood _there like an idiot and almost got killed. And after, in the hospital, I figured—well. If those ghosts were real and wanted to hurt people, others must be out there too, right? And I figured it might happen again, especially if my parents got their portal working one day. I knew I had to do better the next time something like that happened. I had to _be _better."

Danny breathes, and it shakes into the microphone and rattles out of the loudspeakers. Sheer dogged stubbornness is the only thing keeping him going.

"But it—it _did _happen again. And I... I _panicked. _I just _stood _there _again_ and that ghost knocked me out, a-and when I woke up it was gone and my dad was _dead. _I just _stood _there and let it happen. I should have done something, but I was too _scared. _He's dead and I could've—it's my f-fault,_ I should've—"_

Jazz springs up to usher Danny back down to the pew, hugs him tightly while he tries so hard not to cry he ends up choking.

One of Jack's aunts stands up after a terrible eternity, and while she talks—in one ear and out the other, how could anything she say be meaningful in the wake of _that?— _Maddie reaches out and squeezes Danny's knee until he looks at her.

"It wasn't your fault," she tells him firmly. "He would never blame you. No one would. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, sweetie—"

He shrugs Jazz off just enough to pull Maddie into a hug as well, and for a moment, for the time it takes for Jack's aunt to finish and for Maddie to stand up and approach the lectern with her head held high, it seems like they'll survive this.

* * *

Alicia checks the mail the evening they return home, and amid the pile of junk and bills and bland Hallmark cards repeating the same rote _Sorry for your loss _and _With sympathy _there's a letter from someone Maddie has honestly not thought of in years.

"Vlad? Vlad Masters?"

"Don't I know that name?" Alicia asks, frowning at the envelope. Even across the kitchen table Maddie can tell the paper is high quality, thick and cream-colored. He always did like that sort of thing. "Rich guy, ain't he? Thought I read about Vlad Masters buying out, whatsit, that construction company—"

"We went to college with him," Maddie replies faintly, unable to say _Jack and I. _She holds out her hand, staring at that distantly familiar handwriting once Alicia's handed the large envelope over. There, both of their names, as it should be. Vlad must not have heard, otherwise it would only say _Madeline Fenton _and inside there'd be another tired letter informing her of how hard it must be for her, and on, and on. But here it says _Jack and Madeline Fenton, _and inexplicably the official UW-Madison seal too.

It's an invitation to their 20-year college reunion, which will be hosted the last week of May at Vlad's mansion in Madison, Wisconsin. The invitation is impersonal in a way she finds refreshing after so many wincing apologies for Jack, just a high-gloss foldout pamphlet of activities and entertainment amid pictures of the mansion's castle-like exterior and a few shots of the ballroom and foyer. There are instructions on how to get there from the Dane County Regional Airport and a list of recommended hotels. All meals will be provided free of charge by Upstairs Downstairs Catering (gluten-free and vegetarian options available). There is a liability release and waiver agreement, a consent and authorization for emergency treatment, and a photo and video release agreement. All of them must be filled out and returned along with the RSVP no later than May 5th. If she has any questions she's welcome to reach out to the Wisconsin Foundation & Alumni Association (WFAA) at the email or phone number listed below.

"Huh," she says.

"Huh," Alicia agrees, reading over her shoulder. "You should go."

"What? No. Absolutely not," she adds when Alicia gives her a Look.

"Why not?" Alicia smacks her with the envelope to keep her from retorting. "Give me one reason—one _good _reason, mind, and the first five you think of don't count 'cause I already know what they'll be and they're all _horseshit." _

She opens her mouth, mentally runs through the first five _perfectly acceptable reasons _she'd give, then sees a small white square of card stock that hadn't been on the table a moment ago. It must have fallen out of the envelope.

There's a personal touch to the invitation after all. More of Vlad's distantly familiar handwriting, ending in a dramatically looping signature however many years of being a CEO must have forced him to cultivate.

_I know we didn't part on the best of terms, and that 20 years  
is far too great a stretch of time to expect things could be  
anything like they were. But you were my dearest friends once,  
and we sought to achieve such greatness the world has never  
seen together. It would be a gift to see you again, if only for  
the reunion and nothing more. Please consider attending. _

_Wishing you only the best,  
Vlad _

"I can't," she says numbly, holding out the card. "He's expecting _both _of us."

Guilt and grief tangle in new configurations around her heart. She stows the invitation into the kitchen junk drawer before the brambles can choke her, and by the end of the day she's convinced herself it's better this way. Better to pretend she'd never seen it at all.

* * *

In the handful of weeks between Danny's hospitalization and Jack's murder they'd managed to gather enough samples off the two vultures to catch the eye of a few interested benefactors. Wealthy eccentrics and established companies and even a contact with a three-letter agency who had assured the two of them that her superiors were _very _interested in the specimens they'd captured.

But that had been then. Then, when they'd had a specimen that had begun to show signs of cracking under the pressure they'd applied to it. If they'd gotten it to talk, to tell them where it had come from—and more importantly, who had _sent _it—that would have been the ace in the hole they desperately needed. Money wouldn't have been any concern if they'd gotten a _lead _out of that beast. But it had been freed by the octopus that had killed Jack, and the truly dead specimen was withering at twice the speed now without any substantial source of ectoplasm to keep it in one piece. She was going to have about six liters of mildly corrosive pea soup by the end of the week, and _no one _was the least bit interested in that.

"Chrissakes, Maddie," Alicia sighs, taking off her reading glasses to toss them aside. "And I thought my divorce had fucked _my _finances over."

Maddie winces, but doesn't protest the comparison. She hadn't gone into the ghost hunting business out of an interest in making the big bucks, but she had underestimated just _how _deep in the hole she and Jack had crept over the years. Their insurance hadn't been inclined to cover Danny's medical bills—video proof of ghosts didn't mean much when the company flat out refused to cover attacks from them—and then there'd been the funeral and all of its myriad expenses, and not one of Jack's extended family had chipped in, and...

Maddie frowns at the printout of their bank account history. She's in the hole, certainly, and by a staggering amount, but less a few thousand dollars than she ought to be. "Did you pay for our plane tickets?"

"And the hotel," Alicia confirms. "Least I could do."

"I didn't ask you to do that," she says, defensive. Alicia favors her with another Look. It seems as if that's all she's done since she's been here.

"Don't even start with that. I didn't do it out of pity; you know I don't waste my time with _pity. _I saw you and your kids hurting and I wanted to help. Least thing my alimony could be useful for was making sure you three got to say a proper goodbye."

Fresh tears sting her eyes and her jaw locks of its own accord; it takes her a moment to find the breath to say, "Well. Then. Thank you, for that."

"Don't start with that either," Alicia snorts. "I don't need your gratitude. What I _need _is for you three to not be living outta that souped-up RV a'yours come fall."

She wants to laugh at the absurdity of such an idea. Homeless? Her? But the more they pour over her tangled finances, add up the debts owed with the bank and the loan company and both of their college debts and the hospital, and bills that will be due again in two days, and the lab's been nothing but a drain on their finances since the kids were in grade school, and now _they're _both growing teenagers who go through groceries like it's a competition, and—

Alicia's rough hand settles comfortably on her arm. Funny, how it feels so much like Jack's she expects to see his familiar grin when she looks up. Funny, how her heart finds new ways to splinter every time she looks for Jack and he isn't there. He never will be there again.

"Easy, Maddie. Don't go losin' your head on me. We'll get this sorted."

"There's no _we," _Maddie chokes out. It's all on her now, all of it, _everything._ She's never been alone like this in her life, not once. From living with their parents in Arkansas, to the dorms at UW-Madison, to the creaky little apartment she and Jack had rented when they'd first moved to Amity Park, to the enormous brownstone that's since become Fenton Works, she's _always _had support. Someone to lean against, to hold the line with, to budget and plan and cut coupons and compromise with, and now—

And now Jack's _gone, _and it's all on her, and she can't believe she's let things get so bad so quickly. At the rate things are deteriorating, she's going to have to break open Jazz and Danny's college funds just to _survive—_

"Fuck," she smothers into one gloved palm. _"Fuck." _

Alicia's grip tightens, her other hand catching Maddie's wrist, gently tugging until she looks up again. "Hush. I know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but you're not doing this alone. I won't let your even think of trying to, alright?"

"I won't take any more of your money—"

"There's not much keeping me in Spittoon." Alicia interrupts. "I bet I could charge twice as much for my rhubarb pies up here, huh?"

Maddie blinks. She's not. Surely she's not. "You can't drop your whole life to move _here." _

Alicia's smile turns sharp, and in a matter of minutes it's a full-blown argument between them, hands slammed on the table and trying to outshout one another. Maddie loses the argument and even after running through it backwards and forwards she's not quite sure how. Or, for that matter, why it felt so good to lose.

She knows the guilt will come later, when Alicia's fistfighting a realtor and selling anything and everything she can spare to make the trip up north again easier. She knows simply having her sister here won't solve much, especially not while Alicia's job hunting and her own debt is so steep. She's going to have to clean out the lab and take the Ops Center apart down to the last bolt, sell it all for scrap metal and for whatever Axion Labs will give her for the equipment. She knows every last dollar she earns will go right back out again to the debt collectors, and that every last dollar will still have time to stomp on her heart for selling her life's work. She knows, she knows, she _knows. _But there aren't any other options.

At least… at least having Alicia here to crack jokes about it all might just make the hurt a little easier to bear.

* * *

"You got a phone call," Jazz says as she comes up out of the lab the day after Alicia flies home to begin her one-woman war on real estate. She's curled up in Jack's sewing chair with a notebook that's practically grown feathers it's so edged in pastel sticky notes.

Maddie hums absently, still half-caught up in the list of salvageable equipment and what's she's hoping to squeeze out of Axion Labs to hear more than Jazz saying something at her. "What's that, honey?"

"A phone call," Jazz repeats patiently, waving a light blue sticky on her forefinger when Maddie finally focuses properly. "From some guy named Mr. Masters?"

She stills. Not because she's surprised Vlad had called; he could be bizarrely wheedling back in college, insistent until he'd gotten an answer one way or another. She stills because her heart skips a startlingly beat that leaves the room spinning for the barest blink of an eye. She's not sure if it's relief that Vlad's interested in offering more than a token olive branch, or unease. He'd been so sick, the last time she'd seen him. So sick, and so _angry. _

"Did he say anything?" Maddie asks, astonished by how even her voice sounds to her own ears.

"Something about an invitation his assistant had sent you a while back? And that he was sorry to hear about Dad." Jazz grimaces, looking tired, looking older than a month shy of seventeen. "He left his cell number. Who is he?"

"...An old friend from college," she settles on after a moment's hesitation. It's not a lie. It's just easier than saying, _Your father and I almost killed him 20 years ago and we haven't spoken since. Also, he had difficulty with the concept of 'flattered, really, but uninterested.' _

She takes the sticky, reads the number there printed in Jazz's bubbly handwriting. She knows exactly how the conversation will go if she calls him back. It would be easier not to call. Smarter, too. Just as it would be easier and smarter not to drop everything and go to the stupid reunion. She doesn't want to put on a mask of one-upmanship and pride with a bunch of vaguely familiar names appended to doughy, gray-haired strangers when Jack will have been gone less than three months. She's not sure she could.

But... well. If Vlad's still anything like the flinching boy she remembers, he _will _call again. Maybe all he wants to do is apologize. Maybe he'll leave it at that, and understand completely when she doesn't go. Maybe if she treats the phone call like ripping off a Band-Aid it won't sting as much otherwise.

"Where's Danny?"

"At Tucker's again." Jazz shrugs, gaze falling back to her notebook. "It's probably better for him to be with his friends than here, honestly."

"Are you, ah, tutoring anyone this week?" Maddie asks delicately. She and Jack had worried over how Jazz struggled to make friends since starting high school. She still worries, but Jazz won't appreciate that now.

"No. I don't... I decided it was better to put that on hold after..." Jazz shrugs, and then has to sniff and blink several times.

Maddie reaches out to brush her bangs out of her face, tutting softly.

* * *

It takes her another day to muster the strength to call Vlad back, choosing to do it while the kids are at school in case things get... awkward. It only rings twice before—

_"Vlad Masters," _a harsh voice snaps. His impatience is so unlike the boy she remembers she can only stare incredulously at the bookcase until he barks, _"What is it?" _

"Hello, Vlad," she says.

_"Who—" _He gasps quietly. _"Oh. Oh, dear. I'm so—Maddie. It is you, isn't it?" _

"Yes. I'm returning your call." Is that too terse? Definitely too terse. Maybe it's _better_ to be terse, to keep the conversation at arm's length.

_"I... yes. Yes, so you are. I'm glad you decided to. I wasn't sure... I, ah. I heard about Jack." _

Silence. Silence she doesn't know how to fill, so she purses her lips and rubs her thumb and forefinger together. There's a funny little comfort in the squeak of her glove over the hiss of dead air in her ear.

Vlad clears his throat. _"What I mean to say is, I owe you an apology, Maddie. Am I right to assume you received an invitation to the reunion at the end of May?" _

"You are."

_"Yes, well. I left the matter of addressing and shipping out all of those to my assistant. I didn't hear the news about Jack until after she'd finished, and by then it was too late. I wouldn't have—that is, I didn't mean to impose so impersonally on you so soon after your loss—" _

"It's alright," she says with calm she doesn't feel. Her head hurts terribly. The cusp of another migraine. They creep up on here more days than not, now. "You didn't know."

_"But I—Even so," _he sighs. _"My dear Maddie, are you—? Oh, no, but you must be sick of that question by now. Pretend I didn't ask, hmm?" _And he chuckles, the same nervous little chuckle as he'd had in college, like he was more used to his jokes falling flat than getting a laugh, never mind he was so witty.

She hums. "You're right. I am sick of that question. But it's the first time you're asking it."

_"I... Well, then. How are you?" _

She exhales heavily, palming her face in her free hand. The dark is a balm to her hot and gritty eyes. "How do you fucking _think?" _

If he's startled by her vehemence, he doesn't react to it. Instead he says, _"Jack was a good man," _and that cuts her open so quickly she can't _help _the sob that escapes her. _"Oh! Oh, Maddie, don't! Oh, drat, no, I didn't mean to—ah, please stop crying. You're 300 miles away. I can't do anything but listen to you cry, please stop—" _

Her next sob comes out more like a laugh that's been run over twice for good measure, but it's the closest she's come to laughing in days. In forever, it feels like. Vlad's still no good with crying, it seems. "S-sorry. It's just—"

_"Oh please, don't. Don't apologize, not to me of all people. I know it's been halfway to eternity since we last talked, but I'd rather hoped you'd remember I'm not anyone you need to drum up excuses for." _

It's her turn to clear her throat, moving the phone away to sniff wetly and thumb her eyes dry. "Ah—still. I can't go five minutes without crying since—since it happened. I'm a mess and you—it sounds like you've got your hands full."

_"Mm, well, a bit more goes into hosting a reunion than I realized when I agreed to do it." _Another nervous chuckle, then a few aborted attempts at words until he finally asks, _"Would it be...? Jack's—passing—was in the papers. Was it really a ghost that did it?" _

"It was. I wasn't—home. When it happened."

_"Oh, Maddie. That's... I'm so sorry, my dear. Truly, I am." _

"Thank you," she replies, because it's the expected thing.

_"Did it get away? The ghost?" _

"Yes, and it was intelligent enough to free the first one too." She can't help the bitterness that creeps into her voice, and honestly doesn't try that hard to stop the creep. She's owed a little bitterness, isn't she?

_"Ah, 'other one?'" _

"Three ghosts attacked a month before—before. My son, Danny, was badly injured then—" A sympathetic murmur she ignores. "—We managed to capture two of them, more or less, but that's all for nothing, now."

_"What a terrible year it's been for your family."_

The bitterness gets the better of her, slipping out as a nasty sort of cackle. "I've had better."

_"I..." _He sighs, gruffer than before. _"This is presumptuous of me, considering how long it's been, but Maddie? It sounds to me like you need a break." _

"I'm not coming to the reunion," she snaps. "And don't—don't ask that, Vlad. I can't. I'm up to my neck here. I don't have time to come up to Madison, never mind the—"

_"The what?" _Vlad asks softly.

"You damn well know how I was gonna finish that sentence, Mister Fortune Magazine's Number One," she snarls, scrubbing at her face again. "Not all of us managed to make our first billion by 35."

_"...Your sister's been by, hasn't she?" _He huffs._ "You only slip into the Spittoon acks-sent when you've been exposed to her attitude for a while." _He tries to mimic a Southern drawl, managing to mangle the English language in heretofore unimagined ways. When she doesn't laugh he flounders out another apology, and she's—

She's had enough. Of apologies, of him, of everything. Her head's trying to kick itself in and it's scarcely ten o'clock. She needs an ice pack and at least an hour in a dark room if she doesn't want to worry the kids when the come home. "Now really isn't a good time, Vlad. It was—nice—to hear from you again, but—"

_"Maddie, wait. Please." _

She grits her teeth, but pauses with the phone about an inch from her ear.

_"If you're going to throw my own wealth in my face then at least do me the courtesy of trying to take advantage of it. I'll pay for your flight—flights. It would be an honor to meet your children. Jasmine sounded like a brilliant young woman when I spoke with her yesterday. I can only imagine Dan—Daniel takes after you as well." _

"Complimenting my children won't soften me up, Vlad. And I _don't _need your _charity." _

_"Don't think of it as charity. Consider it an apology. For twenty years of silence, and for—for Jack. He'd be over the moon to—" _

_"Don't _finish that sentence."

_"—mm. Well, consider this: perhaps your children could use a break just as much as you do." _

She snorts to mask her wince. "Oh, and you're an expert on raising two teenagers now?"

_"Oh, Heavens. No. No, I've long since accepted I'm not cut out for fatherhood. Much too selfish, me." _

"I would have said self-absorbed."

_"Tch. Words hurt, my dear." _

"Sticks and stones," she retorts, and frowns at the flutter of gratification she feels when he laughs outright. "Vlad. That's—that is a _very _generous offer. I'm flattered, but. No. I can't. The reunion, so soon after Jack—" She swallows.

Vlad hums at her silence. _"I understand. But, at the risk of being the one to throw my wealth around, my mansion is rather enormous. And the reunion will strictly take place only on the first floor. Attendance entirely optional." _

Maddie chews her cheek to quiet her knee-jerk protests. She runs through the weeks since Jack's—Jack's death. Has it really only been _weeks?_ She's sleeping so poorly. The days have been blurring in and out and overlapping each other. She only knows it's a school day because the kids aren't home.

She thinks of Jazz, huddled in Jack's sewing chair, hiding in her homework because she's got no one to talk to. Danny, practically living at Tucker's to avoid even walking past the lab. Alicia had been handling 90% of the housework while she'd been here, and what had Maddie done with all the spare time that had left her? Stood in the lab staring at the bleached-clean empty space where Jack had died, listening to the yawning emptiness of her heart.

"I—" She swallows. "Let me think about it. Please."

_"Of course, Maddie. I only want to help you." _

Funny, how happy he sounds saying that.

* * *

_Flowers gathered in the morning_

_Afternoon they blossom on_

_Still are withered in the evening_

_You can be me when I'm gone_

\- Neil Gaiman, The Sandman


End file.
